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Congress Ends With Water Bills

Mon, 12/12/2016 - 9:54am

scalera

Congress Ends With Water Bills: In the final hours of this Congressional session, the Senate passed the ‘‘Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act’’ -- the ‘‘WIIN Act.’’ The nearly $12 billion measure authorizes 30 new Army Corps of Engineers infrastructure projects around the country and now heads to the President’s desk. The final House-Senate Conference agreement does include new public notice requirements for exceedances of the lead action level and for distribution of independently conducted lead tap samples results. The final House-Senate Conference Committee dropped the changes to the drinking water SRF ranking systems that would have "reduced the number of small disadvantaged water systems from receiving the necessary funds to initiate such programs." The WIIN Act includes a provision intended to limit competition between the new Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation (WIFIA) program and the SRFs; the bill states that "appropriations made available to carry out WIFIA should be in addition to robust funding for the SRFs... and the appropriations for the SRFs should not decrease for any fiscal year."